


There is no 'I' in 'Team' (there's also no 'us')

by Teyke



Category: The Defenders (Marvel TV)
Genre: Danny Rand's Magic Hand, Gen, Guest appearances by: - Freeform, Karen Page - Freeform, Luke Cage - Freeform, Malcolm Ducasse - Freeform, claire temple - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-16
Updated: 2017-12-16
Packaged: 2019-02-15 08:44:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13027428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Teyke/pseuds/Teyke
Summary: The door opens, and Murdock walks in.“Ugh,” says Jessica. “You have got to be kidding me.”Jess is still nursing a grudge over the whole 'pretending to be dead' thing, but she's not so much an asshole that she'll turn down a case involving missing kids, even if she wishes she was.





	There is no 'I' in 'Team' (there's also no 'us')

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LJC](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LJC/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide! I had a lot of fun writing it, and hope you enjoy it! 
> 
> This fic picks up a while after Defenders. I presumed that Matt wasn't _too_ quick to tell everyone he wasn't dead, more for having other stuff to do and being kind of terrible at people than because he was actively hiding, but that it eventually came out. _How_ he was not dead, I leave to future canon, and do not address here.

Jessica wakes up with a raging headache, handcuffed to a table. Memory filters back: make that _still_ handcuffed to a table. Nothing’s changed. She contemplates going back to her nap, but the combination of chair and table have already put a crick in her spine. Enhanced durability is over-rated, ugh.

The door opens, and Murdock walks in.

“Ugh,” says Jessica. “You have got to be kidding me.”

He smiles tightly, fumbling just a bit as he sits down and pulls out his papers. Ever the actor. “Hogarth would like to keep your cases -- outside, for now.”

Hogarth doesn’t want to deal with the shit she’s shovelling these days. _Jessica_ doesn’t want to deal with that shit, either. She wants to deal with Murdock even less. “I’d like another lawyer.”

He shrugs. “It’s your dime if you do.”

Like she has any spare cash right now. “I’ll take a public defender,” she snaps.

“If you don’t want to be out of here in half-an-hour -- that’s your choice.”

She’d like to tear a strip off of him. If he sounded smug or righteous or patronizing at all -- and god knows he likes to be all three -- she’d throw him out on his ass and let him go beg Hogarth for other billable hours. Like shit she needs his time or charity or help.

But mostly he sounds brittle and tired. _Good_. What kind of asshole lets people think he’s dead for months? Even Jessica’s never done that, and she’s practically a professional asshole. It comes with the PI job description. Of course, so does lawyering. What the hell did she expect?

She growls low in her throat. “Fine. Get me out of here.”

A trace of a smile, there and gone from his face. She just doesn’t want this stupid chair to permanently wreck her spine, that’s all.

  


It’s 6am and there’s someone banging on the front door of her apartment. Fortunately her experience with hangovers is great enough that she can pull a pillow over her head and shut out the asshole making all the racket. Unfortunately Malcolm has a key to her place and an enthusiasm for weird cases not dampened by them showing up pre-dawn.

She throws something at him when he knocks on her bedroom door. Whatever she threw goes crunch. So does the wall. She wakes up enough to be grateful she didn’t hit Malcolm, then to think resentfully that he’d deserve it, and then shouts, “Oh my god, get the fuck out!”

Unfortunately the new hole in her bedroom wall lets her hear the sound of whoever-the-fuck settling in with Malcolm. Shortly thereafter, there’s the smell of eggs frying, along with laptop keys clicking and murmured voices.

Her brain wakes up the rest of the way and she drags herself out of bed, leaning in the doorway without bothering to get dressed. 6am? She will throw him out on his ass. Both of them. Malcolm can only stay if he makes her eggs greasy enough. “What the fuck do you want, ears?”

Turns out it’s Murdock in the kitchen and Malcolm at the computer. Murdock looks like he’d like to judge what she’s wearing, except that he can’t -- except that he can, because he’s cooking eggs in her kitchen. She frowns at him. He looks like ten miles of bad road, and not because he’s got the same kind of relationship she does with late nights. She knows where he’s been. Why is he _here_?

“Ears?” asks Malcolm, disgustingly bright-eyed. “Oh, right, the horns.”

“Thanks for telling him,” Murdock says, poking at the frying pan. The smell of bacon hits the air. Her ire dims, just a little.

“Nah, I figured it out on my own.”

“Because she was careless.”

Jessica’s eyes narrow. “What the fuck is your -- ”

His fingers are gripping the knife too tight. His movements are jerky, harsh. His face is an explanation all its own. But he’s here in shirt-sleeves, not showing up in his fetish gear in a hurry.

“I have a job for Jones and Ducasse,” he says, reaching into a pocket and flicking a business card at her. It flies as straight as one of his stupid nunchucks and she grabs it out of the air.

“You are not a partner in this, Malcolm, goddamnit.” Answers why the normal clothes, if he thinks they’re in business, or closer than that -- ew, though, Malcolm’s, like. A stupid younger brother.

Who is grinning just like one as he shrugs. “Hey, it’s exciting.”

Goddamn deflecting, chipper _asshole_. “Jesus. What is it?”

They both go grim. “Kids,” says Malcolm.

“I can’t find them.” Murdock twitches, one of his weird little head-tilts he does when he’s trying to locate a specific sound or scent. Or taste, maybe. Weirdo. “I ran across a dumped _shipment_ but it dead-ended. I think they were supposed to be taken out of the city. There’s more of them missing -- we’re on a time-limit. If you’re _awake_.” He pulls open her cupboard, unerringly locating plates, and slams one down, not quite hard enough to crack it. Scrapes eggs out of the frying pan. The bacon’s mixed in. He offers it to her. “Then I’d like to hire you.”

Bacon and eggs with a side of abduction. Her stomach roils sourly.

She looks at Malcolm. “Get him the forms.”

“Already done, boss,” he says, and shows her -- they’re just waiting for her counter-signature.

“Fine.” She picks up the omelette with her fingers and stuffs it in her mouth, grabs a pen with her other hand and scribbles a messy signature. “Tell me what you know.”

 

Murdock wears cheap suits and carries a battered briefcase; he takes cases pro-bono and pays her most expensive hourly rates without complaints. She doesn’t need to ask him where he gets his money: the same source as before, a well that will take at least a decade to run dry, even at the rate he’s spending it. That it hasn’t suddenly disappeared is a reassuring sign that his psycho ex hasn’t reappeared, but Jess stays on guard.

This job means breaking and entering, a little forging, and general snooping while Murdock sits on a rooftop and tries to become one with the city, or something. Jess charms people into giving her what she wants, pitching her voice higher and friendlier, changing her outfits as she needs to and making a couple fast exits. Kids don’t go missing out of nowhere, but some are _appearing_ out of nowhere. She adds up bodies and they sum to too big a number.

“They’re bringing in kids from outside,” she says, tapping her finger on a list of records. _Emerson Shipping Inc._ They’re a distressed company, currently under oversight by a bankruptcy firm, who fired half their operators for delivering lightened loads. She’s got ideas about what they were using the space for, instead.

“Then why grab the kids off the streets?” Murdock paces, turns, and paces back. “I’ll give these guys a visit.”

“After I’ve been nosing around? You _want_ to link our names together?”

A raised eyebrow. Like she doesn’t know exactly how he was planning on asking them.

“Your _other_ name?”

“Midtown--”

“Buried pretty thoroughly. You really want to dig up that kind of attention?”

“I can’t ignore kids,” he says.

“I’m just saying. You’re making this a habit.”

A muscle in his jaw twitches and he turns away again.

It’s not like she’s got room to criticize. Getting anywhere near other people with _unusual abilities_ has never ended well for her. Look at what happened with -- no, stop that thought. Look at what happened to Luke. Look at what happened when she got mixed up with a whole group of weirdos: one turned out to be such a special asshole he went and made them all think he was dead.

If only she could be as jaded as she ought to be, by now. Gone through all that shit but she’s still a sucker for any asshole with a sob story about missing kids.

Unfortunately, the kids are real.

“Fine,” she says. “Go loom at them from the dark.”

She had plans of her own, tonight.

 

Her plans end up getting interrupted by a phone call. She’s not an idiot: her phone is on low vibrate and tucked inside an inner pocket of her coat, pressed against her shirt. She can feel it without it making a sound. Folded papers join it and then she’s outside, up to the roof, escape in any direction. The caller ID says ‘Devil Boy’.

_“You can drive, right?”_

“You found them?”

 _“Not yet. Found some guys. Talked to your guys -- middle-men, only. Kids’re already moved_. _”_

His voice is tight with something more than anger, breathless with more than exhaustion. Goddamn idiot. “Where are you?”

 

Jumping from rooftop to rooftop across the boroughs while carrying a guy dressed up like a stripper-gram is one of the least dignified things she’s ever done.

He stays unconscious. Good. She wants no witnesses for this.

She wouldn’t mind a conscious witness if it meant she didn’t have to be doing this. It’d serve him right if she dumped him off in front of the hospital, fetish-gear and all. Goddamn asshole.

 

“Bottom line: your leg needs surgery.”

Claire manages to sound exasperated instead of worried. God, Jess loves Claire, even while she kind of really doesn’t. Showing up at 3AM at her ex’s girlfriend’s apartment? Awkward. Claire’s sheer poise makes up for a lot in the face of blood and a half-naked Luke, hovering around uncertain of what to do.

“We’ll see,” says Matt. Since he’s currently staring blankly at the ceiling with his mask off, eyes unfocused, the phrase is a bit more ironic than it usually is from him, but he doesn’t seem to register it.

“I’ll call Danny, ask him if he can do something with that ki-healing he was mentioning,” Luke suggests.

“How about I call the _hospital_ , and _they_ can do something?”

“How about not,” says Matt. “A bit hard to explain some things.” His voice is lower than normal, made small by suppressed pain.

The papers are itching against her skin. Her nerves are jittery from something else. The leg might be what’s keeping him on the couch but the punctured lung was more immediately critical. And the gunshot wound to the leg nicked a vein. Their trip across town didn’t help either, no matter that her controlled falling is considerably smoother than her rattling old car. She’s coated in his blood. The room stinks of it.

Luke gave up on trying to get her to go take a shower half an hour ago. With Matt awake and talking -- enhanced senses _can’t_ be his only special ability, not considering how much blood she’s wearing -- it now feels stupid, standing here. Uselessly sentimental.

He’s not dead. This time. Good job, Matt.

“It’s a severed tendon,” says Claire. “Even you can’t just walk that off. Unless you’re planning on finding a black-market surgeon.”

He looks contemplative.

“Who can keep secrets,” Jess drawls from her point in the doorway. Claire nods in emphatic appreciation for the backup, which turns to quick alarm when Matt tries to sit up, for like the third time.

Claire prevents this newest bit of stupidity, then gestures at Luke and makes a phone-call motion with one hand. He nods and slips out.

Jess isn’t needed here. She’s about to slip out when Matt says, “Wait. Jessica?” He sounds confused. Did he really not know she was still there, earlier? She knew he was _hurt_ , but she didn’t think his weirdo senses ever turned off.

“Didn’t find somebody who’d talk, but they had a safe,” he says. “USB drives, they’re in the left lower pocket.”

“Old-fashioned safe, I take it,” Jess says dryly, going over to where his fetish gear is piled on the floor. Ruined from having to be cut up to get it off over his injuries. Not like he’ll be needing it for a while.

“Nah. Electronic. Could smell their fingers on the buttons.”

“Why am I even surprised.”

“Danny’s on his way,” Luke says from behind them. “He says he might be able to do… something.”

Something. Maybe. “Give the boy wonder my regards,” Jess says, and makes for the door, USBs in hand. “Or, actually, don’t.” She doesn’t want a class reunion. She doesn’t want to get involved with all this again.

She’s glad Matt called her instead of bleeding to death. Of course she is, she’s not a monster. She can even admit it to herself.

But Jesus, right now she really needs a drink.

  


The DA’s office is going to have a field day with the papers Jess grabbed: circumstantial evidence but deeply suggestive nonetheless, the kind of thing that cases are built out of if only there’s enough of it. She leaves them for Malcolm to pour over, photocopy, and stick in an envelope for Hogarth. Her attention is drawn to Murdock’s USB’s instead: she saw three unmoving bodies when she picked him up, but somebody will discover those guys before long.

She’s going to be there, when they are.

It gnaws at her enough that she goes straight back to the warehouse office to check, and there she lucks out: somebody’s come to visit, in a beat-up old white van. She takes a lot of pictures, then drops down to street-level and follows the guy in just in time for him to discover the unconscious -- so she hopes, kind of -- bodies of his fellow kiddie traffickers.

“Hi,” she introduces herself, right before she clocks the guys across the face when he turns around. Not hard enough to knock him out. Just hard enough to daze him and let her get the gun away, because she’s been shot and maybe she didn’t bleed everywhere like Matt did tonight, but she’d still rather not repeat the experience.

If she has any luck it’ll make this dick-canoe more inclined to spill what she wants to know, too. She tosses the gun aside and lifts him up one handed, around the neck. There’s dried blood splattered all across her clothes, starkly visible in the industrial lights inside the warehouse. There’s blood in her hair. There’s probably blood across her face, ew, because there’s only so many ways to carry a full-grown adult without jarring them and she’d gotten blood all over her hands and then probably touched her face. She really should have taken Luke up on that shower.

But she has had it up to _here_ with these assholes, all the greater evil in the world unable to dig into her flesh the way that somebody bleeding out right in front of her does.

“Jesus Christ,” the guy chokes.

“You’re gonna tell me where the kids are, or you’re gonna crawl there on broken legs,” Jess tells him, and smiles her best fuck-you smile.

  


She doesn’t want the first thing the kids see to be a crazy woman covered in blood, but like fuck she’s trusting the cops to go in point on this. Daredevil cleaned out a lot of the corrupt cops in Hell’s Kitchen, but that just means the Precinct’s only half full of shit. And this goes beyond the Kitchen’s borders. She’s heard a bit from Luke about what’s happened in Harlem in the six months since Knight left on disability, too. It’s not any better in the other burroughs.

“Hi,” she says when she breaks the padlock on the door. A couple of twitching bodies lie behind her. “I’m gonna get you out of here.”

She stays alert and on guard until the cops get there, until Social Services get there, until she sees a couple faces she knows: faces she can get Hogarth to nail to the wall, if needed. She takes pictures. When Matt’s reporter friend shows up, she’s got a photographer in tow who takes even more, and then Jess lets herself sit down hard.

One of the fuckers had a knife.

“You’re insane, bat-boy,” Jess mumbles, cradling her side. Who goes _looking_ for this shit?

There’s too many crying children here. She wants to go home.

Cheating spouses, broken families… how many of her cases really improve anything for anyone? Has this one? It should. She knows it should. But right now the kids are screaming and the euphoria of winning’s worn off and she feels _tired_ , because she knows how the trauma will linger, never really go away, and meanwhile they’ll be sucked into a system and fucked up even further, if -- maybe -- not as badly.

Unfortunately, she’s _still_ covered in blood and that’s not the kind of thing that inclines the cops to let a person wander off. At least she’s not in handcuffs. She sits against the wall and drifts from one maudlin thought to the next until the reporter sits down next to her and shoves a flask in her face.

“You’re a saint. Or I’m hallucinating,” Jess mumbles, and takes a swig. It’s cheap stuff that tastes like fucking ambrosia. She wipes her mouth.

“I want everything,” says the reporter -- Page, Jess remembers, as she takes another swig and her brain begins to kick back into gear, memories of similarly cheap-ass alcohol -- wine, that time -- lining up with the info she’d dug up on Murdock, once upon a time. Karen Page. “This went unnoticed for too long.”

Except by Murdock, probably, with those freaky ears of his. And her own stupid ass. And now this chick, bright-eyed with the fire of righteousness even at the crack of dawn.

She wonders how long it would have taken Murdock to get this far on his own.

“I owe your pal the story first,” says Jess. “Help convince them to let me leave and I’ll give you copies of the data, too.”

So she’s not above using some of that burning zeal for her own purposes. Sue her. She’s got an in with the most powerful law firm in the city.

And the craziest lawyer in the city, too.

  


Matt, it turns out, is under bedrest at home. It’s his new apartment, since he lost his old one with that pretending-to-be-dead dickery: Jess dug up the address, of course, but ste hasn’t been inside before now.

It’s spare: a soulless modern white-walled place, with no pictures (of course) and lacking even the weirdness of the light patterns from that old neon billboard. It feels almost sterile, or it would, but Danny Rand’s passed out on Matt’s couch, snoring like a chainsaw, and when Luke lets them in he’s wearing an apron, and there’s the delicious smell of frying bacon coming from the kitchen.

Jess steals pieces while Page and Matt have an extremely awkward, apologetic argument in the other room, and Luke smacks her hand away, and it’s domestic enough to give her hives, but Danny’s snoring is even worse so she stays. Also, the bacon is probably the best stuff she’s ever had, and that’s not just because she’s starving and not yet hungover.

“Are you actually babysitting now?” She jerks her head toward the couch.

“When life gives you the chance to have bacon on somebody else’s dime, you take it,” says Luke. “Especially if it’s bacon bought by a millionaire supertaster. This stuff probably costs twenty bucks a pack.”

Page comes out, runs her hands through her hair, and grits out, “I can’t _deal_ with him right now. Story. You owe me one when I get back. I’m taking a walk.”

She’s a bit red-eyed, a bit resigned. Jess wonders if they’ll work it out. Friendship. Way too much work. She sighs and takes her turn to go see the invalid.

He’s sitting up in bed with a braille reader and his leg propped up and iced, but his head tilts to the side when she comes in. “You got them.”

“I got them,” she says. “Police have them. Your friend has copies of my files.” She raises an eyebrow. “You have a talent for pissing people off, you know that?”

He swivels his head like a bird-dog hearing prey. “Yeah. She -- ” His head tilts again. “She’s just circling the block. She really is coming back.” His expression lightens with surprise. Couldn’t he tell? Or did he just not believe it?

“Yeah, she’s a sucker for a sob story.”

His eyes return to her. Well, to somewhere over her shoulder, which is the same thing. It matters more where his ears are pointed. “No. Just... driven.”

Her, or himself? Or any of them?

“Thank you,” he adds.

“Like I could ignore sick fucks trafficking kids. You knew that.”

“Yeah. Sorry.” It’s insincere, an apology for form only. 

His apology two months ago was sincere, when it’d come out that he’d lied to them. The kind of sincerity brought on by lying to himself: she could tell even in the moment that he’d do the same thing again, no matter what he thought as he was apologizing. Jess thinks she likes this better: a platitude so empty as to almost be snarky, because what kind of sick freak would turn their back on this situation? He doesn’t mean it. And he knows she doesn’t need it.

She hates dealing with snarky assholes. She gets enough of that putting up with herself. But on the whole…

“Whatever, devil-boy,” she says, and lets half a year of grief and resentment go.

**Author's Note:**

> Matt's leg will be fine. Jess's not-quite-a-stab-wound will be fine. Matt and Jess will be as fine as they ever are, which of course is not setting the bar high. Maybe a bit better than that. Friendship!


End file.
